The Guardian: Border agents can’t search your phone without good reason, U.S. court rules

Reuters: CIA secrets will limit senators’ questions to Trump nominee Haspel

The Federalist: It’s not Sci-Fi: China is developing tech that can mold U.S. kids’ minds

Common Dreams: CNN’s Iran fearmongering would make more sense coming directly from Pentagon

Reason: Pulling out of Iran deal could endanger U.S. troops

FEE: Starbucks is the latest victim of pseudoscience

DAVID STOCKMAN: The Donald’s done–The Deep State wins its war on ‘America First’

THOMAS KNAPP: The Iran nuclear deal isn’t just a good idea, it’s the law

JAMES BOVARD: Washington secrecy is creating a know-nothing democracy

Salon: What if we considered police killings a public health crisis? : “Police killings, often times driven by racial bias, have become an all-too-familiar American narrative. Indeed, a new study published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health validates what many have speculated: “Police violence disproportionately impacts young people, and the young people affected are disproportionately people of color.”

Researchers landed on the conclusion through a different approach to quantifying the tragedies of lives lost to police killings. Rather than looking merely at the stated number of deaths, they used a public health calculation that is often used to approximate the impact of a disease — thus comparing deaths of police killings to a public health crisis.”

Techdirt: Cops ‘help’ naked, possibly-suicidal, schizophrenic man by tasing him to death

CityLab: Inside the secret cities that created the atomic bomb

Tulsa World: OSU professor compares Oklahoma’s medical marijuana state question to other states’ laws

Slate: The US government’s secret inventions

Military Times: Psychedelic drug provides relief for veterans for PTSD

Reason: Europe’s new data privacy rules will make Facebook and Google more powerful

Gizmodo: The LAPD used Palantir tech to predict and surveil “probable offenders”

Techdirt: Podcast: How the courts created the Surveillance State

City Lab: The metro stations of Sao Paulo that read your face

Ars Technica: How a suspected drug dealer’s traffic stop led to a crucial privacy case

National Interest Online: China’s surveillance system can scan population in 1 second

High Times: FDA-approved study of marijuana for vets with PTSD begins phase 2

Reason: Illinois police dog trainer warns: We may euthanize our drug dogs if you legalize weed Ed: The drug war is a jobs program and an excuse to use spy tech on the innocent, and this parasite would most certainly be out of a job if marijuana were to be legalized.

The Intercept: Trump violates Iran nuclear deal–ignoring US and Israeli generals who support it

Cato: Kill the Iran deal, open Pandora’s Box

The American Conservative: Gina Haspel and how torture deceived us into Iraq

KIRIAKOU: Gina Haspel debate highlights America’s soul sickness

Futurism: Encrypted genomic data means people can participate in research without sacrificing privacy

FEE: A lot of people agree with a supervillian about population

Engadget: Pretty sure Google’s talking AI just beat a Turing test

Aeon: The techno dystopia of a Slovenian glass factory is a timeless mashup of people and machines

Contemporary and literary peer to H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith (distant relative? Probably too much to hope for) produced hundreds of poems and short stories in the ‘cosmic fantasy’ vein of Lovecraft, and in many ways far surpassed him in imagination and style.  Yet Smith remains virtually unknown today, which seems strange once you read his ‘The Dark Eidolon’, and realize that Lovecraft himself considered Smith the master of the ‘cosmic weird’ fiction they both published.

And now for an excerpt of what you didn’t realize you needed, from To The Daemon:

“Tell me many tales, O benign maleficent daemon, but tell me none that I have ever heard or have even dreamt of otherwise than obscurely or infrequently. Nay, tell me not of anything that lies between the bourns of time or the limits of space: for I am a little weary of all recorded years and charted lands; and the isles that are westward of Cathay, and the sunset realms of Ind, are not remote enough to be made the abiding-place of my conceptions; and Atlantis is over-new for my thoughts to sojourn there, and Mu itself has gazed upon the sun in aeons that are too recent,

Tell me many tales, but let them be of things that are past the lore of legend and of which there are no myths in our world or any world adjoining. Tell me, if you will, of the years when the moon was young, with siren-rippled seas and mountains that were zoned with flowers from base to summit; tell me of the planets gray with eld, of the worlds whereon no mortal astronomer has ever looked, and whose mystic heavens and horizons have given pause to visionaries. Tell me of the vaster blossoms within whose cradling chalices a woman could sleep; of the seas of fire that beat on strands of ever-during ice; of perfumes that can give eternal slumber in a breath; of eyeless titans that dwell in Uranus, and beings that wander in the green light of the twin suns of azure and orange. Tell me tales of inconceivable fear and unimaginable love, in orbs whereto our sun is a nameless star, or unto which its rays have never reached.”

A few years ago I wrote an article for FEE entitled, ‘Obamacare and Hayek’s crystals‘, that sunk like a lead weight. Despite that, I was proud of the fact that it even saw the light of day on that vaunted publication’s front page.  The editor urged me to make the article “relevant”, so I threw in some BS about Obamacare, although I didn’t really care about the specifics of that policy for the purpose of the article.  My main purpose in writing it was to draw attention to a passage in Hayek’s first volume of Law, Legislation, and Liberty that I had never before seen mentioned.  That passage referred to the purpose of a maker of public policy when dealing with a spontaneous order, where Hayek likened that order to a crystal, and the policy maker to a scientist in a lab whose goal it is to create such a crystal.  The scientist doesn’t construct a crystal, atom by atom, but creates an environment conducive for the formation of a crystal.  In the same way, lawmakers must be mindful of how to encourage the flourishing of society: by crafting law that allows the spontaneous order to allocate, innovate, and evolve. Here’s part of the passage in question, from Chapter 2:

“It will be instructive to consider briefly the character of some spontaneous orders which we find in nature, since here some of their characteristic properties stand out most clearly. There are in the physical world many instances of complex orders which we could bring about only by availing ourselves of the known forces which tend to lead to their formation, and never by deliberately placing each element in the appropriate position. We can never produce a crystal or a complex organic compound by placing the individual atoms in such a position that they will form the lattice of a crystal or the system based on benzol rings which make up an organic compound. But we can create the conditions in which they will arrange themselves in such a manner.”

This is far more profound than Hayek has been given credit for.  A spontaneous order is the result of millions of daily, uncoerced decisions by countless, anonymous individuals.  The preservation of that order means the protection, and expansion, of the individual’s sphere of choice.  The protection of our freedom to choose is the sole worthwhile task of the policy maker.  Unfortunately, most policy makers are impatient in the extreme when it comes to social change, and advocate government coercion to force change onto society more quickly than it is ready to accept.  And it never ends well.

FEE: Local cops can skirt state limits on surveillance by joining federal task forces Ed: Communities must place a firewall around their police forces, preventing outside control or influence.  Their funds must come solely from the community they serve, because, like everyone else in the world, police are loyal to the source of their revenue.  It’s the same argument against foreign aid: the money separates the foreign government from its people.  The position of sheriff, more than probably any other in the country, must be isolated not only from federal money and influence, but also from extensive collaboration with other sheriffs.  The sheriff must be independent of every individual and institution except for his or her community.  It’s the only check on an expansive, law-skirting surveillance state.  That the surveillance state is easily expanding into every jurisdiction in America is proof at how little “independence” is being forced on not only our sheriffs but also local district attorneys.

ACLU: 4 things to be worried about in the NSA’s new transparency report

Techdirt: Oakland residents now protected by the ‘strongest’ surveillance oversight laws in the country

The American Conservative: The conservative case against CIA pick Gina Haspel : “I have no doubt that she considers herself to be a patriot, as her supporters do. But that’s not the issue here. The issue is respect for the rule of law. Since the end of World War II, we have had laws in this country that specifically ban exactly those torture techniques implemented and overseen by Gina Haspel at a secret prison overseas. And the United States is a signatory to the United Nations Convention Against Torture. Indeed, we were the primary drafters of that measure, which, having been ratified by the Senate, has the force of law in the United States.

If Gina Haspel had any doubts about her “orders” from the CIA hierarchy, she had only to look at recent history. Just after the end of World War II, the United States executed Japanese soldiers who had waterboarded American prisoners of war. Similarly, in January 1968, the Washington Post published a front-page photo of an American soldier waterboarding a North Vietnamese prisoner. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ordered an investigation. The soldier was arrested, charged with torture, convicted, and sentenced to 20 years at Leavenworth.”

Ed: I think the case could be put in even simpler terms: an “enemy of the State” sounds dangerously flexible, and could be twisted to mean anything that government lawyers want it to.  Do we really want a government that is permitted to torture perceived enemies of the State?

USA Today: Don’t celebrate Karl Marx. His communism has a death count in the millions. Ed: His gospel of property abolition, put into effect, formed a chrysalis from which totalitarianism emerged shortly in such horrific purity as the world had never before seen.  The depths to which the human race could sink were plumbed deeply during the the 20th century, when governments slaughtered their unarmed, unresisting civilians on an industrial scale.  The number stands at 262 million.

Activist Post: “Good Morning America” experiment on kids and unrestricted screen time

The Week: China’s digital nightmare

National Review: Civil liberties can’t survive partisan hatred

A perspective we should think about Zero Hedge: Is social media destroying humanity on purpose?

Washington Post: The giant sucking sound of a debt spiral

CHRIS HEDGES: The danger of leadership cults

DAVID GORDON: Confessions of an auto-didact Ed: I met David Gordon at the Mises Institute during the summer of 2008 as a sophomore in college. What a fun guy.  I can’t believe it’s been a decade since attending Mises U. The class photo is still up!

Ars Technica: The material science of building a light sail to take us to Alpha Centauri

Last one of the night I swear.  This is from Garet Garrett’s essay, The Revolution Was:

“There are those who still think they are holding the pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them. It went by in the Night of Depression, singing songs to freedom.

There are those who have never ceased to say very earnestly, “Something is going to happen to the American form of government if we don’t watch out.” These were the innocent disarmers. Their trust was in words. They had forgotten their Aristotle. More than 2,000 years ago he wrote of what can happen within the form, when “one thing takes the place of another, so that the ancient laws will remain, while the power will be in the hands of those who have brought about revolution in the state.”

The “revolution within the form” is what we face today, it is what makes possible the spectacle of Congressmen, Presidents, and various administrative officials pledging fealty to liberty and the Constitution while simultaneously destroying both.

Ed: I am amazed that you all are still clicking on my links and visiting this site.  I haven’t been as consistent as I would like, but that should change as I begin to focus more on actually writing in this space, as opposed to merely posting links. Please continue to visit this space, thanks for the views.

From his essay, ‘What the American vote for’:

“MY FIRST and only presidential vote was cast many,
many years ago. It was dictated by pure instinct. I remember
the circumstances well. Like all well-brought-up youngsters,
I had been told that it was the duty of every citizen to vote—
reasons not stated. I was prepared to obey in all good faith,
and accordingly, when the time came, I set forth to the polls.
But what was I to vote for? An issue? There was none.
You could not get a sheet of cigarette-paper between the official
positions of the two parties. A candidate? Well, who
were they? Both of them seemed to me to be mediocre timeserving
fellows who would sell out their immortal souls, if
they had any, for a turn at place and power, and throw in
their risen Lord for good measure. Suddenly, the ridiculous
truth of the matter struck me: that the whole campaign was
based on no political reason at: all, but on an astronomical
reason. We were voting simply because, since the time we
last voted, the earth had gone 1461 times around the sun, or
some such number, and for no other reason in the world. As
I approached the polls my resentment of this nonsense grew
stronger and stronger, and when I arrived I deliberately
wrote in a vote for Jefferson Davis of Mississippi.
It was not an ignorant vote, for I was fully aware that Jeff
was dead. Nor was it a piece of mere flippancy—far from it.
I found out afterward that either Mark Twain or Artemus
Ward, I forget which, had once done something of the kind,

on the plea that “if we can’t have a live statesman, let us by
all means have a first-class corpse.” There is a great deal to
be said for that idea, and I am proud to subscribe to it, but
it was not my idea at the time. My vote was a vote of serious
protest against what I regarded as an impudent and degrading
absurdity, and at this late day I am more than ever prepared
to maintain that the instinct which prompted it was sound
and enlightened. I am also prepared to show cause for believing
that this instinct actually controls the majority of our
electorate, whether they are aware of it or not, and to show
cause for believing that they are fully justified in letting it
control them.”

TNW: Facebook vs. Google: Clash of the privacy infringers

Motherboard: Gmail’s ‘self-destruct’ feature will probably be used to illegally destroy government records

Bloomberg: Your online history could soon determine your credit score

Wall Street Journal: Privacy is dead. Here’s what comes next.

The Atlantic: Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t understand journalism

EFF: There’s no middle ground on encryption

Gizmodo: Facial recognition used by Wales police has 90 percent false positive rate

The Times: Undercover police “had sex with political targets”

Reason: Even where weed is legal, government regulation makes advertising it a nightmare

Antiwar.com: The latest act in Israel’s Iran nuclear disinformation campaign

RAND PAUL: Congress moves to give the President unlimited war powers

National Review: Washington offers up bread and circuses, but the US is remarkably resilient

ScienceMag: AI researchers allege that machine learning is alchemy

Business Insider: Psychedelic drugs appear to fundamentally reorganize the brain–and they’re starting to turn into approved treatments

Chicago Tribune: Drink this! Cold brew coffee infused with cannabis compound

Engadget: Facebook’s ‘Sauron alert’ protects staff against privacy breaches

Tech Times: Facebook used your Instagram images to train its image recognition AI

Activist Post: Pentagon seeks $300 million for 65,000 US-backed forces in Syria

WSWS: Trump ends protected status for 86,000 Hondurans

FEE: Curing disease is sustainable, government in healthcare is not

Mises: “Real socialism” has indeed been tried–and it’s been a disaster

The American Conservative: The Saudi coalition’s starvation of Yemen hasn’t ended

High Times: 8 worst portrayals of weed in television shows

I remain shocked that the Malthusian population bomb theory was the basis for Thanos’ universe-spanning campaign of genocide in the latest Avengers film.  That it was expounded by Thanos himself in such plain, Malthusian terms is even more shocking.  While watching the film though, I wished that at least one Avenger had countered that ideology with facts and theories, instead of mere violence.  An Avengers analog of Julian Simon to counter the biologist Paul Ehrlich embodied in Thanos.  Because even if Thanos were destroyed, the population bomb thesis would still exist unrefuted in the Avengers universe.

Business professor Julian Simon and biologist Paul Ehrlich made a bet in 1980 on which direction the prices of certain resources would go over the next decade.  Simon challenged Ehrlich, and gave him the option of picking which resources to track over the next years.  All five commodities Ehrlich chose decreased in price over the next decade.

The population of the globe more than doubled over the past 50 years, yet food production tripled. According the overpopulation alarmists, this should have been impossible.  Human life expectancy across the globe reached its highest level so far, and global poverty fell below 10%, the lowest on record.

Yet despite these facts, and despite the total failure of Ehrlich’s theory, academics and totalitarian governments around the world believe that it’s immoral to have more than one child, as it is has been in China, that the human race is dooming itself by not checking it’s growth.

The key to this rapid rise in living standards in the face of a seeming explosion in population has to do with what Julian Simon dubbed “the ultimate resource”.  This resource is human creativity, and he believed that our rising living standards weren’t occurring despite population growth, but because of it.  More people on the planet means more creators, innovators, and workers engaging in what Deirdre McCloskey calls “market-tested innovation“. The unrestricted innovation, entrepreneurship, and tinkering with new and different ideas, and the testing of all of it in the marketplace is the source of our prosperity.  That’s why it is crucial that we protect that environment of market-tested experimentation in the face of an irrational fear of population growth.  As long as the freedom to innovate and experiment in an unrestricted market economy, economic prosperity will always outstrip resource consumption.  A politicized fear of overpopulation is what will doom our species, not population growth itself.